I Hate Men
by Beastie Boyy
Summary: They sweep you off your feet, call you "Princess," and carve you weird wooden skulls, or make you rings out of their shoelaces. They get inside your head and they ruin everything. They're evil, gross, manipulative creatures known as men, and I hate them.


**It's been forever and a day since I've written anything Total Drama related. But I couldn't help myself.**

**I feel as if I'm one of those sorry few who actually feel for Courtney. Something about her personality, or her god awful attitude, I don't know. But I love her. I like watching her, and I think she's had an interesting character arc throughout this show. All feelings for a certain good girl/bad boy pairing aside, I decided to dive into her mind. And this is my result.**

**Reviews are appreciated. Thoughts on what I could've done better, thoughts on Courtney, or all this Scott/Courtney & Duncan/Courtney business. I love knowing how others feel. So leave me a comment; it'd be much appreciated!**

**And now, without further ado, enjoy the memoir of an A Type Psychotic Crazy!**

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Men, if you can even call them that – pigs, scoundrels, or cavemen seem more appropriate in my experience – seem to be the bane of my existence. If I were to have a weakness, it would be how easy they seem to wiggle into my sight and throw me off my straight ahead course to success.

They can't be trusted! And if you don't believe me, it's your loss.

Allow me to explain. I'm Courtney Martinez. I'm what you'd call an A Type. I've dedicated every moment of my life to competition, to being the best, to proving myself, to aspiring to be something great. I'm not someone who "goes with the flow;" I'm someone who gets stuff done. That's just how it's always been. It was how I was raised, and these aspects of myself have been key components in my fool proof formula for success.

"Never let someone get in the way of you being you."

Does that sound familiar? It should!

This is one of my key pieces of advice in my best selling self-help book. …_Total Triumph for Teens?_ You can't tell me you've never heard of it! It won an award; best self-help book of the year? Anyone?

My point is, that's advice I live by. I've never let someone compromise who I am. That's one of the many things I love about myself. I may be smack dab in the middle of adolescence, but my identity isn't up for debate. I'm Courtney Martinez, and I know exactly what that means. Good luck getting me to rethink that!

Or, at least that's what I thought.

Now, this is a rarity for me; I usually never admit to my shortcomings. Not because I refuse to accept criticism! I just don't have many shortcomings. But, in my experience, men are a poison that causes one's entire system to go haywire. One minute, they're irritating you off your last nerve, and the next thing you know, you're stealing food from a fridge and eating triple the amount of smores that a normal serving would allow!

If you haven't guessed, I hate men.

They're a disease. They make you think maybe life isn't all about winning trophies, and they force you to wonder if letting someone else into your life would make you happier. They introduce you to a world of pain and suffering, which they masquerade as "fun." And then they try to change everything about you because you aren't good enough for them.

They get inside your head and convince you they're more important than winning 100,000 dollars. But they don't stop there. They infect the brain and suddenly, they're more important than even a million dollars!

And then, just when you're wrapped around their finger, they kiss your best friend or don't take your word when you're twisted up in some dishonest plot. They drop you the second some pasty temptress struts past them, or just when the going gets rough. They drop you because, at the end of the day, they mean much more to you than you do to them. They drop you because you've outlived your usefulness.

See what I mean? They're manipulative, slimy, evil creatures.

But it doesn't stop there! They make it their life's work to terrorize you, to rub it in your face that they've moved one from you, _while _they were with you! They make sure to sabotage your chance at winning a million dollars because it wasn't enough that they ruined it for you two times before under different circumstances.

It's a man's goal to make me miserable. Men seem to get off on taking my plans and ripping them to shreds. Men ruin lives. I hate men!

Now, if this all makes me sound weak, you're gravely mistaken. I've made my mistakes yes, but I learn from them. Trusting men again isn't up and coming on my agenda. And if one thinks they can find _another_ crack to squeeze through, they have another thing coming! Because Courtney Martinez doesn't make the same mistake three times. Momma didn't raise no sucker.

Opening your heart twice and considering that maybe, this time will be different, is more than enough ammunition for a lesson learned. When you touch a hot stove, you get burned. It may be humiliating that I had to touch said stove twice, but someone once told me life was about living a little and-

No! Life is not about living a little. See? This is what men do. They poison your mind. They're a virus; they hardwire everything inside you. Courtney Martinez's life is most certainly not about taking chances. It's about calculating risks and logically taking the most beneficial courses of action.

One gross, hairy, creature acting as a man told me once that living a little would make me more fun. Well I lived a little and now, I've never been more miserable.

Because that man sweeps you off your feet, and calls you "Princess," and carves you weird and creepy wooden skulls, and thinks about you while gazing at the stars, and bullies the nerd that cheated you out of the game into submission because it's how he shows he cares.

And that's just it.

This man shows you he cares, or, at least he makes you think he cares. And then you apparently bore him to death so he runs off with a girl that looks like death.

Men lie; they're professional actors. They put on a show to dazzle you and prove they aren't like the rest when in fact, after the show's over, that's exactly what they're like. It's all a game to them, a hunt, and I was the prey.

And just when you tell yourself you won't be a man's prey again, some freckled farm boy falls right into your life (literally), and suddenly, you're celebrating hour-anniversaries and holding onto the ring he made you from his shoelace.

Of course, he gets you to wonder if he's like the rest, and he forces you to give him a chance because how will you know if you don't? And he's not like the rest! He's funny and chivalrous, but cool and calculating.

He's nothing like Dunc- the other man who shall remain nameless because he's only got eyes for you. You fall right into the trap when you wonder maybe he's the one, maybe he's the one I should be with, he's the one worth taking a risk on.

…Until the going gets rough and some nerd kisses you. And then it's game over! All he wants to do is fight, but then prove himself to you, but then fight some more! He's suddenly the most sensitive man on earth and you wonder what you ever saw in him, or in any man for that matter.

You've been with him for just two hours and suddenly he has your entire world upside down. And you think to yourself, this is your first love all over again.

See what I mean? Men can't be trusted.

I solemnly swear I will never trust a man again for as long as I live. The, dare I say, heartbreak they put you through eats you up. You become obsessed. You actually wonder, what you did wrong, what you could've done differently to guarantee things would work out. And, you know in your mind that those thoughts are ridiculous; he cheated on you! What did you do wrong? But your heart doesn't want to accept that as the truth. Your heart wants you to blame yourself.

Someone foolish once said that you never forget your first love. I elect to forget him and the entire summer I spent with him. Someday I will; he'll be a faded memory in the back of my head, irrelevant in the grand scheme of my life.

But his damage is done.

I've learned firsthand how dangerous men can be. They've done to me the one thing I never thought someone could. They got right in the way of me being me. The competitive, professional, mature young woman who came to win, not to get tangled up in some messy love drama business. They've made me forget who I was. But not anymore. A man will never again make me question myself.

I've wised up to their ways. And I can say, with education and experience backing me up, that I, Courtney Martinez, hate men.

The worst part is that I don't hate men – at least these two men. Whether I like it or not, they're here to stay. Maybe that "you never forget your first love" fool isn't so much of a fool after all. I can't bring myself to hate them, at least not now. They're evil, scheming, heartbreaking, lying, no-good pigs, but they broke me.

But, I like to think I broke them too. Courtney Martinez isn't easily forgotten. Even if they don't anymore, they had to have felt something for me. And that's the worst part about men, they're human beings too. They have hearts deep down inside, and having a heart means they know exactly how to break one.

Spread the word, Courtney Martinez hates men.

Especially green mohawked, face pierced punks and redheaded, freckled farm boys.

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**Hope you enjoyed! This is my first Total Drama fanfiction since 2008. All my other work is long gone now, but a recent interest revival in the show has sent me falling right back into this fandom. I hope you liked my take on Courtney, and if not, I'd love to know what I could do better.**

**I'm considering a companion piece, from Duncan's perspective. If that's something you guys would be interested in, let me know! I'm also highly considering getting right back into writing Duncan/Courtney stories, but I dunno yet. Feedback on that would be much appreciated.**

**And, for those of you curious, Courtney did in fact write a best selling teenager self-help book. Total Triumph for Teens is canon...though it's never mentioned. It was mentioned on her biography on the original Total Drama Island site, way back in like 2007. I have no idea if that's even around, but yeah, some people seem to forget she wrote a self-help book. How ironic.**


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